Part 1 (2/2)

”I have nothing, little citizens,” he said with a mock gravity; ”nothing but my blessing.”

And he made a gay gesture with his left hand over their heads, not the act of benediction, but of peppering, which made them all laugh. The bride and bridegroom pa.s.sing on joined in the laughter with hearts as light and voices scarcely less youthful.

The Frauenga.s.se is intersected by the Pfaffenga.s.se at right angles, through which narrow and straight street pa.s.ses much of the traffic towards the Langenmarkt, the centre of the town. As the little bridal procession reached the corner of this street, it halted at the approach of some mounted troops. There was nothing unusual in this sight in the streets of Dantzig, which were accustomed now to the clatter of the Saxon cavalry.

But at the sight of the first troopers Charles Darragon threw up his head with a little exclamation of surprise.

Desiree looked at him and then turned to follow the direction of his gaze.

”What are these?” she murmured. For the uniforms were new and unfamiliar.

”Cavalry of the Old Guard,” replied her husband, and as he spoke he caught his breath.

The hors.e.m.e.n vanished into the continuation of the Pfaffenga.s.se, and immediately behind them came a travelling carriage, swung on high wheels, three times the size of a Dantzig drosky, white with dust.

It had small square windows. As Desiree drew back in obedience to a movement of her husband's arm, she saw a face for an instant--pale and set--with eyes that seemed to look at everything and yet at something beyond.

”Who was it? He looked at you, Charles,” said Desiree.

”It is the Emperor,” answered Darragon. His face was white. His eyes were dull, like the eyes of one who has seen a vision and is not yet back to earth.

Desiree turned to those behind her.

”It is the Emperor,” she said, with an odd ring in her voice which none had ever heard before. Then she stood looking after the carriage.

Her father, who was at her elbow--tall, white-haired, with an aquiline, inscrutable face--stood in a like att.i.tude, looking down the Pfaffenga.s.se. His hand was raised before his face with outspread fingers which seemed rigid in that gesture, as if lifted hastily to screen his face and hide it.

”Did he see me?” he asked in a low voice which only Desiree heard.

She glanced at him, and her eyes, which were clear as a cloudless sky, were suddenly shadowed by a suspicion quick and poignant.

”He seemed to see everything, but he only looked at Charles,” she answered. For a moment they all stood in the suns.h.i.+ne looking towards the Langenmarkt where the tower of the Rathhaus rose above the high roofs. The dust raised by the horses' feet and the carriage wheels slowly settled on their bridal clothes.

It was Desiree who at length made a movement to continue their way towards her father's house.

”Well,” she said with a slight laugh, ”he was not bidden to my wedding, but he has come all the same.”

Others laughed as they followed her. For a bride at the church-door, or a judge on the bench, or a criminal on the scaffold-steps, need make but a very small joke to cause merriment. Laughter is often nothing but the froth of tears.

There were faces suddenly bleached in the little group of wedding-guests, and none were whiter than the handsome features of Mathilde Sebastian, Desiree's elder sister, who looked angry, had frowned at the children, and seemed to find this simple wedding too bourgeois for her taste. She carried her head with an air that told the world not to expect that she should ever be content to marry in such a humble style, and walk from the church in satin slippers like any daughter of a burgher.

This, at all events, was what old Koch the locksmith must have read in her beautiful, discontented face.

”Ah! ah!” he muttered to the bolts as he shot them. ”But it is not the lightest hearts that quit the church in a carriage.”

So simple were the arrangements that bride and bridegroom and wedding-guests had to wait in the street while the servant unlocked the front door of No. 36 with a great key hurriedly extracted from her ap.r.o.n-pocket.

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